Since the end of 2010, an informal circle of Berlin-based persons involved in art has been gathering under the title “Haben und Brauchen / to Have and to Need” to take action in regard to cultural and urban political issues. As a grass-roots democratic art association, the NGBK makes its resources available for continuing the discussions initiated in the frame of “Haben und Brauchen / to Have and to Need” and expanding the scope beyond Berlin. The focus is on fathoming one’s own options for action – from formulating political demands, to establishing networks with similar national and international initiatives, to conducting artistic actions, all the way to drawing up alternative economic models beyond the state funding of art.

For the first event, guests from Rotterdam and London have been invited to give an account of the current repositioning vis-à-vis local cultural and urban policies and – based on examples from their context – the self-organisation of artists, as well as their protest actions against budget cuts and precarisation. Up for debate is the embedding of artistic work in societal developments – beyond the “creativity cosmos” and the art system.

Claudia Firth is an artist and writer living in London. She has participated in various collective work and housing projects including the Aesthetics of Resistance Reading Group and the Precarious Workers Brigade.

Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson live in Rotterdam and Berlin. Their art projects are frequently based on cooperation and deal with problems of globalization and social inequality, among others issues. In the frame of this discussion, they will talk about their own projects to address the collaboration and connections with currently active social and political movements in the Netherlands and Iceland, and discuss possible links to the activities related to Haben und Brauchen / to Have and to Need.

The event series will be continued next year and additionally discuss topics such as the desire for a democratic city and the participation of residents in urban development processes. The privatization and increasing economic exploitation of urban space are clearly impairing the living and working conditions of residents and cultural producers. The event series seeks to continue the debate on the role and self-understanding of cultural actors in this context (between gentrification and precarious living conditions).

A film club screening and conversation on power relationships, media addiction, and capitalist hypocrisy hosted by Florian Wüst

Over the course of the previous Salon Populaire sessions, Florian Wüst presented a series of six mises-en-scène showing films and film excerpts that reflected the past and present of West Berlin as a tribute to the Salon's physical location in the city. Film City Berlin now continues in a film club setting, each time presenting a seminal feature length Berlin film followed by an open conversation after the screening. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "The Third Generation" will make the start.

In response to the Baader-Meinhof deaths, the plot follows an ineffective group of underground terrorists who plan to kidnap an industrialist. Fassbinder's script revolves around the concept that the state could invent left-wing terrorism in order to protect capital and to conceal its own growing totalitarianism. When the film was released in West Germany in September 1979, it mostly received negative reviews and scandalised both the left and the right. However, "The Third Generation" is now considered to be one of Fassbinder's best films, reveling in mordant political humor and visual grotesquery, and praised for its visionary critique of an all-encompassing information and media driven society.

Screening with English subtitles, discussion in English.

A film club screening and conversation on power relationships, media addiction, and capitalist hypocrisy hosted by Florian Wüst.

Salon Populaire invites you to join the finissage of Sandra Peters’s show Interplay hosted by the Kunstsaele Berlin. She conceived the installation borrowed window in relation to the architecture of Rudolph Schindler and developed it in relation to the exhibition space at Kunstsaele Berlin.

The evening will start with a presentation of a work Sandra Peters did about Rudolph Schindlers house in West Hollywood, C.A., a slide installation with the title: flux balance: rotating wings, 835 North Kings Road, West Hollywood.

Afterwards two selected writings will be read by the art historian Julian M. Schindele and by Sandra Peters: a manifesto by Rudolph Schindler (1912) and Zikkurats by Sol Lewitt (1963), which will be the starting point for the discussion that evening.

Both texts are relevant to a broader understanding of Sandra Peters’ approach to space, architecture and art. Schindler’s manifesto is a precise articulation of his ideas in architecture, concerning the relationship between inside and outside, form and material, experience and space. Whereas Schindler focuses on general principles, but in relation to individual buildings, LeWitt is concerned with the urban structure as a determining factor as well. What Schindler and LeWitt have in common, however, is an interest in intricate patterns that are functional not just in a narrow utilitarian way but in an aesthetic way. Sandra Peters highlights such aesthetics by shifting architectural elements sculpturally from one space to another, from a fixed structure to a movable structure, from outside to inside, from architecture to art, thereby questioning our relationship to such elements.

The program starts at 8 p.m. & the bar will be open.Donation: 2 EUR

The conversation is organized in collaboration with Aanant & Zoo. Please join us afterwards for drinks and soup.

Ein Gastmahl. Dinner, drinks and discussions on the notion of the miracle/wonder. With Spanish tapas and Paella by Marco Segurado from 'You Don't Tell it to Anyone'.

Salon Populaire invites you to participate in an evening dedicated to the miracle. Taking up on the ancient Greek tradition of coming together to eat and drink while at the same time discussing philosophical questions, we are continuing our series of joint dinner-conversations at the Salon. In cooperation with Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga / Program, we chose the miracle as our fourth topic.

Miracles mark the boundaries of occidental rationality, which is mostly shaped by christianity and ancient philosophy of nature. The "miraculous" labels the extraordinary, as well as mysterious healings, incredible natural occurrences and the wondrous unknown, unexpected technical innovations, artistic ideas and also sheer coincidences. A miracle is a window onto the world from which art, science and technology have emerged – a window that draws attention to a deficiency or a gap that, as much as we might like to, we can not close. With this evening, we would like to put the occidental world view and its fragile interpretational skills up for discussion and compare our perspective with alternative points of view found in other cultures.

Starting from both philosophical texts and personal experiences, stories and thoughts, we have invited a number of guests to contribute to the diversity of the evening. Each guest will bring one story, thought or text, which they relate to the miracle/wonder and use that as a starting point for an exchange of ideas and positions around and across the table.

Access to this event is open, but space is limited. Service charge 15€, 3 course meal, incl. drinks. Please rsvp to info@salonpopulaire.de.

with Prof. Dr. Hans-J. Aminde and Ulf Aminde

Prof. Dr. Hans - J. Aminde is retired Prof. for city planning and architecture and run an own bureau. He is editor of the definitive text "Plätze in der Stadt / Spaces in the City". Ulf Aminde is an Artist and Performer working within social coherences and meeting people at the border to the crisis. In his work he combines elements of fine arts, theater and film. Both will try to give independent Lectures on their work. The Lectures will be held in German.

Mary Shelley was not yet twenty when she created Frankenstein in 1816 wrote a tale of mythical dimensions which hold us in fascination till today. The basic story of a scientist who seeks to create a man but instead makes a monster contains so many threads and narratives that this short story becomes a consice encyclopedia of what is it that makes us human. It is a horror story with gothic plot, a science fiction and a feminine critiqe. It is also a text about orientalism and colonial patterns of behavior, and itis also a very funny story. Jung und Wenig took the story as an inspiration of an avalance of images,associations and occultic gestures. Doreet Harten dwells in the world of Shelley, and Jung und Wenig try to put order in the myriads of discourses the text and images offer us.

Luis Camnitzer in an open conversation with Michael Müller and the audience about hegemonic language and arbitrary order.

For Luis Camnitzer art is, above all, an instrument for the expansion of knowledge. Since the sixties he has probed primal questions as to the social functions of art, the relationship between artist and observer as well as the multilayered network of language and power. It is essential to his method that the process of making sense occurs in tandem with the audience, where the work functions as the generator of communication to open mental space. An important working medium is the written word that in both Camnitzer’s artistic creations as well as in his theoretical writing strives to be as astute as it is enigmatic in its expression.

Luis Camnitzer will discuss his methods and conceptions of art and education with its aims and miscellaneous obstacles with Michael Mueller. The audience is cordially invited to join in.

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The program starts at 8pm and the bar will be opened!__

The conversation is organized in collaboration with Aanant & Zoo on the occasion of the exhibition "Luis Camnitzer", opening on November 18.

Rosalind Krauss mentions in her standard work on the meaning of sculpture "Lessing asserts that sculpture is an art concered with the deployment of bodies in space. And he continues, this defining spatial character must be separated off from the essence of those art forms, like poetry, whose medium is time."* Israeli artist Assaf Gruber, currently a resident at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, relates to this point of view, to understand how sculpture can structure film from within the frame.

Educated as a sculptor and video artist at Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and at The HISK, (Higher Institute of Fine Arts, Ghent) in Belgium Gruber is working on the series “Studies in Sculpture” since 2004 exploring Krauss’s note that all bodies exist not only in space, but also in time. His screening at Salon Populaire takes the title from the U2 song from 1992 as a departure point to raise questions, desires and thoughts about our realities as constructed through cinema. What are we looking for? Satisfaction? Pleasure? And who actually cares about reality?

Salon Populaire partners with the Künstlerhaus Bethanien to showcase time-based works and special productions by the center’s artists in residence since May 2011. Künstlerhaus Bethanien promotes contemporary art and artists and is a center for 25 artists in residence. At the salon, they are invited to leave their studio practice and engage with an audience in an event open to their own interpretation.

A Series by Ellen Blumenstein and Felix Vogel.

The series “Exhibition and the Act of Exhibiting“ approaches the contemporary art world’s ongoing debate on the role of the Curator. The series does not focus solely on the curator and his or her work, but attempts to present their role in light of its whole context and with regard to other actors in the field of art and media.The events will both investigate the specific situation in Berlin – in its institutional and in its informal exhibition practices – and they will examine the format of the exhibition and the practice of exhibiting in general.We are not only concerned with challenging different practices but also with attempting to articulate and establish exhibition and the exhibiting as a discourse. This discourse examines the role of different actors and parameters in relation to their function, social space and prod-uctivity. We would like to discuss and describe the terms of exhibiting: what ‘curating’ – inside and out of the museological framework – can mean.On the one hand, this series would like to consider basic processes and premises of the ex-hibition as “cultural technique” and not to present it through concrete projects. On the other hand, strategies for regulating this emerging discourse will be analyzed by relating it to other fields, and in this way establishing specific forms of legitimization.Exhibition and the Act of Exhibiting is created as a forum aimed at all those who are interest-ed in the exhibition as a form of knowledge production and who are seeking a long-term di-alogue.

For the first evening, we will introduce a first set of questions which we would like to discuss with the audience. Our idea is to establish an open, regular round table where the participants and/or guests take turns in presenting their take on the subject and together work on a discourse on exhibition making.

Starting point of this lecture is a planned reader about recent contemporary painting (in collaboration with Hans-Jürgen Hafner). Main reason for such a publication is simply the lack of ultimative texts about the last developments in painting. The lecture will present possible issues of this coming publication: The different death´s of painting - Helpful renegades in modernism - Postmodernism as style-managing synergy effect? - Right now, Remodernism or submodernism? - De- and Reskilling: error versus skill - The guild´s trap or it doesn´t matter anyway in the expanded field of painting - And if there´s nothing left than various ways of academism in contemporary art now?

LECTURE WILL BE IN GERMAN

The program always starts at 8 p.m. & the bar will be open.Donation: 2 €

Augustin Maurs, cello. Ana Teixeira Pinto, wolf.

The wolf tone is an acoustical parasite resulting from the interference of vibrations produced on a certain note on string instruments. This designation itself refers to the “wolf fifth”, a metaphor of the unpleasant rendition of an interval that has been artificially cut of to fit in the Pythagorean system of the “circle of fifth”, on which all western music is based. In reality, a series of Pythagorean fifths does not appear as a closed circle, but as an infinite spiral.

The program always starts at 8 p.m. & the bar will be open.Donation: 2 €

An open discussion about the responsibilities of institutions and artists for the future of contemporary art in Berlin.

An open discussion about the responsibilities of institutions and artists for the future of contemporary art in Berlin.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011, 8pm

Over the past months, "To Have and To Need" has established itself as a rhizomatic platform for artists and cultural producers that engage in fostering debates and taking action on issues of cultural and urban politics.

For the fifth evening in a series of open discussions, we address the relationship between different groups in the Berlin art context - institutions as well as individuals -, their respective positions and responsibilities towards the current situation and their vision for the city's future of contemporary art. The recently published "P/Act for Art" newspaper of the 7th Berlin Biennale (1) or the latest bbk position paper (2) may function as a starting points to fathom the proposals and statements made, and to further discuss possible common grounds, diverging interests, and strategies for developing and claiming political voice.

The event will be held entirely in English to enable the numerous international artists, practitioners, gallery and project spaces in Berlin to follow and join the debate.

Phanos Kyriacou: Everyone should walk.

Phanos Kyriacou: Everyone should walk

If you get up early and watch the sky to the southeast about an hour to 45 minutes before sunrise, you may be able to see a star appearing close to the position where the sun will come up. It will be visible for perhaps ten days, but by early February you won't be able to see it any more. In the last two weeks of January, if you watch the sky shortly after sunset, you will see a bright star in the southwest. By mid-February, you won't be able to see it any more. If you are able to get a good look at it on a dark night and notice exactly what the stars look like around it, and if you can repeat this on successive nights, then you just might be able to see that it changes its position with respect to those stars, though it happens to be in a part of the sky where there are few bright stars.

The idea of Specific Objects – Show and Tell is to have a look at the stories behind or ‘before’ the finished art work. By inviting a guest to bring an object of his/her choice–which can be a physical object like a book or a film but also a non-physical object like Foucault’s figure of thought or even the inner city of Berlin–, we hope to instigate and stimulate joint reflection and debate with the audience on modes of thought and possible ways of how to make them visible or give them forms.

On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life. Reflections on Freud and Rosenzweig. (Conversation will be held in GERMAN)

An evening with Eric L. Santner, Luisa Banki, Frank Ruda and Felix Ensslinorganized by the series Subjektile/Diaphanes publishing, Berlin and Zurich

Eric L. Santner (professor in Modern Germanic Studies and Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago) in conversation with Luisa Banki (translator of "On the Psychotheology of Everday Life" and of the Subjektile publication "Why Psychoanalysis?" by A. Zupan?i?), Frank Ruda (author and co-editor of the Subjektile publication "Beyond Potentialities? Politics Between the Possible and the Impossible") and Felix Ensslin (co-editor of the series Subjektile at Diaphanes publishing, Berlin and Zurich).

In "On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life", Eric Santner puts Sigmund Freud in dialogue with his contemporary Franz Rosenzweig in the service of reimagining ethical and political life. By exploring the theological dimensions of Freud’s writings and revealing unexpected psychoanalytic implications in the religious philosophy of Rosenzweig’s masterwork, "The Star of Redemption", Santner makes an original argument for understanding religions of revelation in therapeutic terms, and offers a penetrating look at how this understanding suggests fruitful ways of reconceiving political community.

Santner’s crucial innovation in this new study is to bring the theological notion of revelation into a broadly psychoanalytic field, where it can be understood as a force that opens the self to everyday life and encourages accountability within the larger world. Revelation itself becomes redefined as an openness toward what is singular, enigmatic, even uncanny about the Other, whether neighbor or stranger, thereby linking a theory of drives and desire to a critical account of sociality. Santner illuminates what it means to be genuinely open to another human being or culture and to share and take responsibility for one’s implication in the dilemmas of difference.

By bringing Freud and Rosenzweig together, Santner not only clarifies in new and surprising ways the profound connections between psychoanalysis and the Judeo-Christian tradition, he makes the resources of both available to contemporary efforts to rethink concepts of community and cross-cultural communication.(Announcement Chicago University Press)

The long-lived pastoral tradition of focusing on rustic subjects and on the romanticized country life of shepherds and shepherdesses is experiencing a remarkable comeback in contemporary art. The surprising comeback is partly caused by the conservationist movement and awareness to climate change, as well as by the now-mainstream consumer fascination with organic food and healthy lifestyle. On another level, the bucolic genre is a perfect niche for art deriving from the peripheries. By adopting "local food" marketing strategies to sell the regional, "provincial art" might have a chance to be noticed and taken seriously.

This week at Salon Populaire, a pastoral event, with a midsummer night's aftertaste, will focus on the bucolic tendencies in art from the Baltics and will be followed by organic peculiarities of regional gastronomy.